"I’m definitely inspired by the folkloric styles, but my own music is difficult to classify.”

World Music Features
Marta Topferova
Czech-American singer/songwriter/guitarist Marta Topferova found her way to Latin music. "I’ve always loved the rhythms and styles of Latin America," she says.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features
Tego Calderon
Tego Calderon is a reggaetón MC, a rapper who laces his Spanish rhymes with heavy doses of boricua slang and Jamaican dancehall beats. Musically, it’s a far cry from classic salsa’s improvisational wizardry.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features
Felix Cabrera
In Cuba son is the venerable sound that paved the way for everything from rumba to mambo to salsa. In the U.S., we have the blues. But it’s not often that you find a musician thoroughly versed in both traditions. Enter Felix Cabrera.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features
Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra
If there’s one group that stands out as the hardest-working Afrobeat torchbearer, almost single-handedly igniting the Afrobeat revival in North America, it’s Brooklyn’s own Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra.

World Music Features
Akoya Afrobeat Ensemble
The 13-piece band boasts a multinational crew that came together from a variety of different musical backgrounds to explore the funky, Yoruba-meets-James Brown style that Fela pioneered in the ’70s.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features
Stimmhorn
Stimmhorn takes Swiss tradition another step further, adding 21st century electronic textures into the mix as a means of interrogating the effects of globalization and immigration on the notoriously closed-off nation.
By Tom Pryor

Move over Tinariwen—the next wave of Tuareg desert rockers is here. Hailing from Mali, Moussa Ag Keyna and Aminatou Goumar—known together, with producer Dan Lévy, as Toumast—have just released their domestic debut Ishumar on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label. A freedom fighter-turned-rock rebel, Ag Keyna recounts how his time in the Tuareg military camps in Libya provided the grist for the band’s hypnotic and haunting music.

World Music Features Boom PamIsraeli surf-rockers Boom Pam are proud to wear their schmaltz on their sleeves, taking their name from a 1969 pop hit that’s become a perennial favorite at Israeli weddings—and recording a version of their own that went straight to the top of their homeland’s charts last year.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features
Gogol Bordello
Not many artists can claim to have invented a whole new genre, but Eugene Hutz and Gogol Bordello did just that, when their drunken, manic, Iggy Pop-meets-Taraf de Haidouks parties outgrew their Lower East Side origins and gave the world "Gypsy Punk." Now, nearly a decade later, a host of Balkan- and Gypsy-inspired rockers have sprung up in their wake, even as Hutz and company branch out into film and beyond.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features
Motion Trio
At a recent WOMEX conference in Essen, Germany, an incredible group of Polish accordionists called the Motion Trio completely rocked the place. They push their instruments to the limits, coaxing strange new sounds out of them.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features
Joe Bataan
And one of the most distinctive and original Latin musicians that New York ever produced, Joe Bataan, has recently reemerged from semi-retirement to reclaim his title with his first album of new music in over a decade.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features
Ramatou Diakité
One of the great voices to emerge from the Wassoulou region of southern Mali is singer Ramatou Diakité, who first broke big in the late ’90s and is now setting her sights on the U.S.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features Seun KutiThere’s something spooky about Seun Kuti’s live performances. When the youngest son of legendary Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti launched a brief North American debut tour in June and July 2007, you could hear jaws hitting the floor as he conjured the ghost of his late father.
By Tom Pryor

World Music Features
Thomas Mapfumo
Thomas Mapfumo is one of the few undisputed legends of African music. He merged rock ’n’ roll with traditional Shona music, and emerged as the voice of his beloved Zimbabwe.
By Tom Pryor